


Lungs Stained With Ink

by npcx



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Dreams, Drowning, Gen, M/M, Run-On Sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7740859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/npcx/pseuds/npcx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo dreams of the ocean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lungs Stained With Ink

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written anything for years, but i had a dream so take whatever this is

The water is heavy on Corvo’s lips, rushing over his eyelids as he opens his lungs to it, breathing it in like air, smoke, oil. The tide passes over his head, restless fingers raking through his hair, suffusing, pushing him back to the shore. Only a wisp of a suggestion before the waves inevitably tug, sweeping - pulling Corvo into ocean depths darker than midnight, empty of starlight but somehow fuller, more whole in its blackness than the thin sky above. Corvo gives himself to it. The tide uproots him, whisks his feet out from under him, the water too dense and black to allow his half-lidded eyes to see the ocean floor. That drowning shouldn’t be this peaceful is a thought that fails to anchor in his mind, passing through him like the tang of ink and brine through his lungs, cool and clear and viscous and overwhelming, each breath drawing him deeper into the depths’ embrace.

He feels more than sees creatures darting past him, the suggestion of seaweed, fins and whalesong parting for him like the crowds at Jessamine’s ball, pleasantries and poison-sweet smiles softened just slightly in quiet awe at the sight of their empress resplendent in rippling white, chandelier light glinting off delicate gold filigree and Royal Protector quiet and vigilant at her side. Now her clockwork heart is silent as it beats against his breast.

No light penetrates the depths Corvo finds himself in, the faint scrape of sand having fallen out from beneath his feet long ago, retracting the illusion of orientation. The vast, dense blackness stretches out for eons. He can no more dream of reaching the surface than he can see; eyes wide open and greeted only with the same suffocating dark he breathes, bereft of even the phantom colours that once bloomed behind his eyelids. Corvo wonders, dimly, at the last time he felt this peaceful; Emily, eight years old and precocious with a voice as gentle as her mother’s, dwarfed by his coat over her shoulders as she sat on his lap and read to him. The ocean’s arms cradle him with the same gentleness, invisible digits brushing over his arms, waist, thighs as water blacker than tar rises in temperature, curling around, in front, behind, the warm breath of a being too vast to comprehend.

_Corvo,_ the vastness whispers, the impression of lips brushing his ear,  _I find you in the strangest places._ Corvo’s eyes fall closed at the touch of a thumb to his cheek, fingertips, palm, achingly cold and solid and present as he leans imperceptibly into the caress. The same lips brush his own, hint of a smile against his mouth as the Outsider whispers rueful and fond,  _but should the ocean call to you in waking hours, you would find it in your best interests to ignore its song, my dear._

Corvo opens his eyes to the morning light pushing through the windows of the Hounds Pits Pub, left hand burning white-hot like the sun. His lips taste of ink and brine.


End file.
